The NSNO Everton Forums

Stumpy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2025 8:23 pm I'm out tomorrow to watch the two games and have a few ales.
There's a good chance i could bump in to my west ham supporting mate.
I'm going to ask him how the sexy football is going now they have got Moyes to fuck off

Small sample, different opposition played, and squad availability etc, but

W1 D1 L3 Potter

vs

W4 D1 L1 Moyes

Hope short term trend becomes long term.

So, so early for us to be feeling smug about anything.

I remember the time us, arsenal and West Ham all hired managers at the same time in Carlo, moyes and Arteta when we thought we were the ones to make the best decision.

Look how that turned out.

Wouldn’t surprise me at all to be here in two years time having discussions on whether we should have moved early for potter once it’s gone stale with moyes.

Enjoying it at the moment of course, but still very cautious about this appointment long term.

TheRam wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 6:17 am So, so early for us to be feeling smug about anything.

I remember the time us, arsenal and West Ham all hired managers at the same time in Carlo, moyes and Arteta when we thought we were the ones to make the best decision.

Look how that turned out.

Wouldn’t surprise me at all to be here in two years time having discussions on whether we should have moved early for potter once it’s gone stale with moyes.

Enjoying it at the moment of course, but still very cautious about this appointment long term.

To be fair I don't think the managerial appointment was our downfall, it was the reckless ownership and spending the 4 years leading up to that.

TheRam wrote:So, so early for us to be feeling smug about anything.

I remember the time us, arsenal and West Ham all hired managers at the same time in Carlo, moyes and Arteta when we thought we were the ones to make the best decision.

Look how that turned out.

Wouldn’t surprise me at all to be here in two years time having discussions on whether we should have moved early for potter once it’s gone stale with moyes.

Enjoying it at the moment of course, but still very cautious about this appointment long term.

To be fair he was, and still is the best of those three managers so we were right to be smug and he delivered whilst he was here

StirlingBlue wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:11 am To be fair he was, and still is the best of those three managers so we were right to be smug and he delivered whilst he was here

Did he though?

We had an amazing start but badly tailed off. Okay, we wasn't in a relegation battle that season but that can't be a measure of success.

Deano Blue Boy wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:25 am Did he though?

We had an amazing start but badly tailed off. Okay, we wasn't in a relegation battle that season but that can't be a measure of success.

He’s the reason we sing Spirit of the Blues again. Had us in the top spot into October if I remember correctly. Got Spirit of the Blues to become the top song downloaded on iTunes 40ish years after its first release.

That in itself is job enough for me.

Deano Blue Boy wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:25 am Did he though?

We had an amazing start but badly tailed off. Okay, we wasn't in a relegation battle that season but that can't be a measure of success.

Sussed out that the moment we lost a couple of first team players our squad was so poor we had to play defensive footy and grind out results where we could. Wasn't the success we all craved when such a big name came in but I think it just showed that we were already on a very slippery slope at that time.

He understand that and adapted but you don't really need such an expensive name and reputation if you're only able to compete at mid table level at best regardless.

I loved Ancelotti and I think if he'd stayed we probably wouldn't have ended up in the trouble we did, but that's more to do with the subsequent managerial recruitment than anything else.

Potter's style so ponderous you wonder if he's an elite manager
Atmosphere was bouncing in the pubs around the London Stadium … and then the game kicked off. Like Roy Hodgson at Liverpool, is this a case of wrong club, wrong coach?
Is Graham Potter an elite manager? It's a question I am asking myself quite a lot at the moment.
He did a very good job at Brighton & Hove Albion— although Roberto De Zerbi's exploits and the early efforts of Fabian Hürzeler aren't making Potter's achievements on the south coast age all that spectacularly. Since then we have his catastrophic short spell with Chelsea, a long time out of the game, and now a small sample size of six games at West Ham United to examine.
Is that the sort of CV that should be earning him links to the England and Manchester United jobs as he once was? I'm not so sure.
Of course, it must be said that the way it all went wrong for him at Chelsea was not entirely of his own doing. The start of the Todd Boehly era was about as tumultuous a time as a Premier League manager would ever have had to deal with. But his results there totally nosedived.
Now he finds himself at West Ham, and while it is early days, I am not convinced this is going to be the right fit either.
The atmosphere at the London Stadium on Saturday before the Brentford game, in the ground and around the pubs and bars of Westfield, was incredible. The place was absolutely bouncing.
And then the game kicked off and it was dead. It was like the life had been sucked out of the place and Potter's style has a lot to do with that I'm afraid.
The attackers Mohammed Kudus and Jarrod Bowen are fast, direct and exciting. They thrive in quick transitions, with space to move into, defenders they can commit and chaos they can create.
But Potter's teams, and I remember this being a constant criticism at Chelsea as well during his short tenure, are the opposite of dynamic. They are slow and ponderous, always happy to play the extra — often needless — pass.
It is riling up the West Ham faithful already. Every time Kudus passed the ball backwards — and it was clearly under instruction for how Potter wants them to play — the fans were booing.
That first half was just awful. Insipid. The best word I could use would be boring. Despite taking so long to build up the play from the back, they still somehow contrived to find themselves continually caught short, with the full backs Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Emerson ahead of the ball when Brentford broke quickly.
Potter obviously deserves some time here, but the gallows humour after the full-time whistle of the 1-0 defeat, as West Ham fans sang that their team were “shit and we know it!” gave me real cause for concern.
So no, I'm not sure Potter on this evidence is an elite manager. It seems to me there's been a fair bit of myth-making surrounding his rise and it's all coming apart a bit too quickly.
Sometimes good managers go to the wrong club. Roy Hodgson at Liverpool springs to mind and Potter at West Ham feels similar.

West Ham strode out to a crowd high on an expectation that faded with an insipid first-half display, during which fans booed their side for passing backwards
PAUL MARRIOTT/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
I hope I'm wrong, and in his defence the second half was much better from a West Ham perspective. Some of that had to do with the introduction of Evan Ferguson at the break. He provided a focal point that the team were crying out for. The striker on loan from Brighton was bright, energetic and laid on the best chance of the match for West Ham that Kudus should have buried.
But considering the West Ham injury crisis, it's a lot to put on a young man's shoulders. He's still only 20, has had a lot of injuries himself, and is probably still reeling from the discovery that Brighton were happy to let him go.
He'd fallen behind Danny Welbeck and João Pedro on the south coast and is in desperate need of some consistent minutes. Otherwise a meteoric start to his career — let's not forget he was also parachuted straight into the Ireland side as a teenager — is in danger of stagnating.
This is a kid who started his career like a train, scoring goals for fun and being linked with £100million moves to all the biggest and best clubs in the country. But since then he has barely scored a goal.
Some teenagers burst on to the scene in incredible fashion — think of Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney who went from 0-60mph in no time at all but then managed to kick on to 100mph. Ferguson's early career, by contrast, is now in reverse. But there's still plenty of time for him to turn it around again.
Whether the same can be said for Potter at West Ham? I'm not so sure.

Feels like you get no time whatsoever these days as a manager, he's only had 6 games in charge of West Ham and people are already writing him off.

Needs time to get his style and message across and probably buy some players that suit his ways more. If he's still struggling in a years time I think questions should be asked, but it's too soon imo for any judgement on him at West Ham. Although I'm glad we got Moyes now despite wanting Potter at the time.

Long term, who knows how it may pan out.

But I think it's pretty safe to say he wouldn't have had the same immediate impact Moyes has had - and given our perilous situation at the time, it would have been a very long and nervy end to the season.

In terms of succession from Dyche, I think Moyes was a more logical choice in that he's transformed the way we play with seemingly minor tweaks to tactics/personnel. Plus, we have that emotional attachment to him, which has been a big factor in re-connecting with the fans and a nice way to see out our time at Goodison. Bringing in Potter would've meant a complete change in philosophy and I'm not sure that would've played out particularly well this season.

It's a big gig for Potter, this. For me, the jury's still out on him and while he may prove himself in the long run, I think for the here and now Moyes was definitely the right choice for us.

StirlingBlue wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:11 am To be fair he was, and still is the best of those three managers so we were right to be smug and he delivered whilst he was here

Delivered??

See dyche is on a league of their own tonight.

What an embarrassment.

Don't think I've ever watched a single episode of that trash.

I don't rate potter, I don't like his face or his voice or his shit football

The cult following he has with some of our fans is ludicrous despite all the evidence pointing towards him being nothing other than bang average

Just like Theseus, Hercules, Apollo & Achilles, Potter is nothing more than a myth